Featured Filmmaker: Michael Mann

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IGN takes a look back at the career of the Public Enemies and Heat director.

By IGN Movies

Chicago-born filmmaker Michael Mann returns to his roots, literally and professionally, in this week's new release, Public Enemies. The film chronicles the last year in the life and crimes of legendary Depression-era outlaw John Dillinger (played by Johnny Depp). Mann's over 30 year-long career has been marked by its preoccupation with lawmen and criminals, going back to his days as a writer on such television series as Police Story, Starsky and Hutch and Vega$.

His first directing effort was the Emmy-winning telepic The Jericho Mile, which also earned Mann a Directors Guild Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television. The movie starred Peter Strauss as a lifer in Folsom Prison who turns to long-distance running and gets a shot at qualifying for the Olympics.

Mann made his feature filmmaking directing debut in 1981 with Thief, starring James Caan, Tuesday Weld, Robert Prosky, Willie Nelson and James Belushi. The crime drama -- which was nominated for the Palme d'Or Award at the Cannes Film Festival -- followed an an ex-con turned independent thief (Caan) who clashes with the Chicago syndicate. Mann followed Thief with the critically panned supernatural film The Keep, starring Gabriel Byrne, Scott Glenn and Ian McKellen.

Mann would find greater success at that time on the small screen as the executive producer and visual influence on the groundbreaking 1980s TV series Miami Vice, a neo-Noir drama that crossed MTV music videos with the gaudiness and drug-dealing violence of Scarface. He also exec produced the cult classic Chicago and Las Vegas drama Crime Story, which starred Dennis Farina. Mann also produced the acclaimed telepics Drug Wars: The Camarena Story and Drug Wars: The Cocaine Cartel.

Mann returned to the big screen with his 1986 film Manhunter, based on Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon. The first movie to feature the now iconic Hannibal Lecter (spelled Lecktor in the film) starred a pre-CSI William Petersen, Joan Allen, Tom Noonan, Kim Greist, Dennis Farina and Brian Cox as Hannibal. Mann would not direct another feature film until 1992's The Last of the Mohicans, a lush, romantic epic adaptation of the James Fennimore Cooper frontier classic starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeleine Stowe, and Wes Studi. Mann followed Mohicans with what is widely considered his masterpiece, the 1995 cops & robbers epic Heat.

Mann used his 1989 TV movie L.A. Takedown as the basis for Heat, turning the telepic into a sprawling L.A. crime drama. Heat is most notable for being the first time that acting icons Robert De Niro and Al Pacino shared the screen together (they were both in The Godfather, Part II but had no scenes together). Mann followed Heat with the 1999 fact-based drama The Insider, which starred Al Pacino and Russell Crowe. Although the picture was critically acclaimed and Oscar-nominated (Mann received nominations as Best Director and shared a screenplay nom with Eric Roth), The Insider was not a commercial success.

The director turned his attention to the biopic Ali, which starred Will Smith as heavyweight boxing champ Muhammad Ali and Jon Voight as sportscaster Howard Cosell. Ali was another critical and commercial disappointment for Mann, but he bounced back with the 2004 "one night with a hitman" thriller Collateral, starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx. With a worldwide gross of $217 million, Collateral remains Mann's biggest hit to date (followed by The Last of the Mohicans and Heat).

Perhaps in an attempt to garner another commercial hit, Mann next brought his 1980s TV classic Miami Vice to the big screen. But the contemporary retelling, starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx as undercover cops Crockett and Tubbs, did less than stellar business domestically; the costly 2006 crime drama was critically savaged and earned a meager $63 million domestically (it cost more than twice that to produce). Mann's latest directing effort, Public Enemies, opened this week, earning a respectable $8 million its first day, which many are attributing to the star power of Johnny Depp and the film's marketing. Reviews, however, have been mixed. Mann has recently been rumored to be reuniting with Robert DeNiro on the hitman pic Frankie Machine.

In addition to his writing and directing efforts, Michael Mann has also produced a number of films through the years. He received a Best Picture nomination for the Martin Scorsese-directed Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator, and produced two Peter Berg-directed actioners, The Kingdom and Hancock, the latter becoming the biggest commercial hit Mann has been associated with.

Continue on for our highlights of the best of Michael Mann's films as a director: